INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — No one ever wanted the Red Sox to endure the season they endured, losing 93 games and looking noncompetitive against major-league competition.

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — No one ever wanted the Red Sox to endure the season they endured, losing 93 games and looking noncompetitive against major-league competition. That wasn’t ever the goal — or, for that matter, tolerable — for anyone involved.

But if a season like last season had to happen, by all accounts, it’s a good thing it happened with Ben Cherington at the helm.

Through everything — the losses, the turmoil, the soap-opera press coverage — Cherington was the same person, the same tone-setter at the helm of the front office that he was when he was hired.

“That’s probably his greatest strength: The guy is unflappable,” assistant general manager Mike Hazen said. “Look, we went through one of the worst periods the franchise is going to go through. Nobody was happy or satisfied with what happened. There was a lot of disappointment. But we had to stay above that and continue to focus on long-term projections for the organization.

“It was extremely unsettling. We’ve never experienced any of this stuff. Nobody has ever experienced this before. It was a fairly unique set of circumstances. For him to handle it that way was extremely impressive.”

That perception of Cherington didn’t take long to get around baseball.

“He’s a great manager of people,” said Jed Hoyer, a former colleague of Cherington in Boston who now is the general manager of the Chicago Cubs. “Everyone loves working for him, and a lot of that showed. I’m friends with a lot of guys that work in the office and talked to them a lot, and they were all incredibly positive about how he ran the office, about his demeanor. He was the same guy every day.

“It makes a big difference in this game. You’re going to lose a lot, and being the same person every day is one of Ben’s strengths. It really helped him over the course of the year. He had a ton of respect going into that job from the staff, and he only added to it with the way he treated a lot of losses.”

The general managers’ meetings this week in Indian Wells mark the second go-round for Cherington in the baseball calendar. He’s finally getting to the point where he’s done everything once before. He’s done the general managers’ meetings once before. He’s done the winter meetings once before. He’s done spring training once before. He’s done the regular season once before.

“Having gone through every part of the calendar once as a GM, it helps to be more comfortable with what we need to do now,” he said.

Because he has a manager and half his coaching staff in place — including, as of Wednesday, a pitching coach — Cherington is about six weeks ahead of where he was in the last offseason. That’s not something to be taken lightly. Everything about last season was complicated by the fact that the front office was simultaneously assembling a coaching staff and trying to build a roster.

This time around, John Farrell was in place before the end of October, and Farrell is running point on the assembly of his staff, freeing Cherington to focus on players.

That leaves to Cherington the process of assembling a roster — still a daunting task considering the depths to which the team fell during his awful first season. Building a roster that can contend in the American League East this season will require all the creativity he and his staff can muster.

That’s something he has a track record with.

Cherington tends to be a low-key personality — thoughtful and methodical, not flashy. When the general managers gathered to meet with media on Wednesday, Cherington wound up in the hallway instead, opting to conduct his media session away from the larger crowds.

The blockbuster trade Cherington executed with the Los Angeles Dodgers last August, however, was the jaw-dropper of the season, a trade that took astounding guts to pull off. Cherington swapped Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez — All-Stars all — for four players with little or no major-league experience and more than $250 million in freed-up payroll.

"He's been a member of a good front office for a long time, and he comes from a variety of strengths and experience," Los Angeles general manager Ned Colletti said. "For me, it was no different than dealing with somebody with 25 years. He was well-trained. I sensed it wasn't the first time he was involved in a trade or the thought process at the high level. I thought they'd probably put him in that situation more than once previously, and it showed."

The trade widely has been hailed as the right decision, but it still takes significant intestinal fortitude to gut a roster and accept 93 losses with no concrete path back to 93 or more wins. That $250 million is only worth as much as Cherington and his staff make it worth.

“From the outside, it seemed like it was probably a necessary thing at that moment — but it was a huge trade,” Hoyer said. “He obviously negotiated it incredibly well, and I was really happy for him. In a year that seemed like things went wrong, that was a huge plus, and he deserves a lot of credit for it.”

“It was a tremendous baseball move on their part to be able to move those type of contracts and actually get value back at the same time,” New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said. “That’s a tremendous move on Ben Cherington’s part.”

Cherington made his share of mistakes in his first season. He’d never say it, but it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t take back the Jed Lowrie-for-Mark Melancon and Josh Reddick-for-Andrew Bailey trades if given the chance.

But with the Dodgers trade, Cherington put himself in position to rebuild the roster quickly. If he can do that, he’ll have the chance to show he can be steady at the helm of a team that’s exceeding expectations rather than falling short of them.

“Obviously, it’s not the year he hoped for or the Red Sox hoped for,” said San Diego general manager Josh Byrnes, who worked with Cherington in Cleveland and in Boston. “He’s the type of guy who will take the good out of it — he’ll assess what’s gone wrong and fix it, and he won’t get caught up blame or all the noise of it. That’s one of Ben’s great strengths. He’s very level-headed. He’s a very clear thinker. He’s very accountable and honest. I’m sure he’s not happy, but I’m sure he’s focusing again on making things better — not blaming anyone or making excuses, just making things better.”